Fire at Table 20

The topic of candles has come up before on this blog, most notably when some lady caught her hair on fire after she got too close to her birthday cupcake with a candle in it. Still makes me laugh. Read it here. When you work with dozens and dozens of candles night after night, a fire is inevitable and it happened once again a couple of weeks ago. Sadly, it was not hair that burned because that is the funniest event in the world right after old ladies falling off of bicycles and babies projectile vomiting on their parents.

As I was taking orders on my side of the room, I was overcome with the smell of something rank. It took me a moment to realize it was not the regular at table 35 who is rumored to have a vagina similar to the insides of a pumpkin. Something was burning. I grabbed my cell phone, put it in video mode and scanned the room in the hope that I would see someone covered in ash and patting their hair. I saw nothing. At the service bar, I was told that another server had caught a basket of chips on fire. At the club, we serve some light snacks like cheese and crackers and chips and salsa. The basket of chips is lined with a paper napkin because we like to keep it classy up in there. I guess she had positioned the basket too close to the candle and the whole thing went up in flames. Why did I miss seeing that? Since I didn't actually see it happen, I can only assume that it happened like this:

The waitress smiles at table 20 and puts their food order down. "Here you are. An order of chips and and freshly made salsa. Please do enjoy your evening and do not hesitate to let let me know if there is anything I can do for you to make your time with us more enjoyable." As she begins to walk away, she notices that the basket of chips is a smidgen too close to the candle so she reaches over to pull it to safety. As she does so, the flame from the candle leaps to the paper napkin and quickly engulfs it in fiery inferno. Knowing that she only has seconds before the napkin lights the wicker basket on fire as well, the waitress grabs the basket and puts it back on the tray. The customer begins to scream with fear because she has had a severe case of arsonphobia ever since she was ten years old when she caught her elementary school on fire after she lit an errant bottle rocket one fourth of July. She begins to panic and our waitress has to decide whether to help her guest or deal with the fire. She looks to the panicked customer's husband for help only to see him paralyzed with fear and mumbling about a fire safety class he took as a Boy Scout in 1979. At this point Smokey the Bear, who is on a blind date with someone he met on Manhunt.com, gets up from booth 1 and pulls a fire extinguisher out of his back pack. He uses the P.A.S.S. sysytem (pull, aim, squeeze, sweep) and gets the fire under control. By now, the woman has passed out and our waitress is now giving her mouth to mouth resuscitation which is a bonus for the waitress because the customer is kinda hot and the waitress is bi-curious. Her husband notices his wife making out with the waitress and immediately snaps back to reality and says, "Oh, so now you're into a threesome?" The woman comes to and the waitress asks her is she's alright and if she'd like a cigarette. Smokey the Bear goes to get a roll of paper towels to clean up the mess from the fire extinguisher and the husband follows him to ask him if he's into role-playing. After everything is cleaned up and the husband has exchanged phone numbers with Smokey, the show begins only five minutes later than planned.

Of course, I didn't actually see any of this happen, it's just conjecture. In all likelihood, the waitress simply placed the flaming basket of chips onto her tray and ran it to the bar where it was thrown into the sink and doused with water. But my version is much better.

Remember, only you can prevent baskets of chips and salsa going up in flames.

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